Exam Topics (Design Lenses) - Map of Content
Important: The five lenses are HOW you read a scenario
The technology notes (Core + AI Infrastructure) are the what; these five design domains are the how to think. In the Practical you reason about a single scenario through all five lenses at once, and each note links down into the technology notes it governs.
The five design domains
- Business Strategy Design - convert business intent into requirements & constraints
- Control, data, and management plane and operational design - reason plane-by-plane; operability as a goal
- Network Design - topology, resilience, scale, addressing, convergence, migration
- Service Design - deliver application/service requirements (QoS, multicast, services, AI apps)
- Security Design - security woven through every layer, risk/compliance-driven
How to use them
- Read the brief and extract business drivers/constraints (Business Strategy Design).
- For each proposed design, walk the plane/operational (Control, data, and management plane and operational design), network (Network Design), service (Service Design), and security (Security Design) lenses.
- Watch for the patterns in Common design traps, and stay disciplined with the per-scenario Scenario intake checklist.
Important: How answers are scored - reason in tradeoffs, not absolutes
The Practical gives partial credit: a defensible answer that correctly weighs implications can score even when it is not the single "best" option. So evaluate every option's implications against the brief instead of pattern-matching to one right technology, and pick the optimal answer for the information available - which is frequently the least-disruptive option that still meets the requirement. Each lens above carries a one-line Scenario reflex capturing how it behaves under that pressure.
See also: CCDE Core - MOC, AI Infrastructure - MOC.